William Douglas

Crickets Chirp After KC Star Readers Rep Recommends Re-Examination of D.C. Tea Party Story
By P.J. Gladnick | April 5, 2010 | 12:25 PM EDT
Listen closely and you can hear the sound of crickets chirping over at the Kansas City Star after their Readers Representative, Derek Donovan, recommended a re-examination by that newspaper of their initial story of a supposed "hate crime" committed at the Capitol steps Tea Party in Washington D.C. on March 20:

I've talked to many, many readers this week about continuing fallout from claims that members of "tea party" protests shouted racial slurs at members of the Congressional Black Caucus and one spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver on March 20.

The Web and the talk shows are awash with reports that the word "nigger" wasn't recorded by people with video cameras. Some have also disputed that Cleaver was spat on, though a video shows pretty clearly to me that he reacted that way contemporaneously. Was it simply spittle from the man yelling in his face, rather than a single intentional spit? You can't tell from the video -- but if someone was yelling at me so forcefully that he also spit on me, I'm not sure I'd make much differentiation there.

As I wrote earlier in the week, the initial report in The Star March 21 should have attributed the claims to the people who made them, instead of simply reporting them as fact.

Yes, a story by William Douglas which was speed written in record time. Of course, the Kansas City Star is now taking its sweet time about actually verifying the "facts" behind the story. One place they might want to start is by Googling "Emanuel Cleaver" and discovering his latest reaction to the spitting incident:

McClatchy Reporter Speed Writes D.C. Tea Party Story in Record Time
By P.J. Gladnick | April 2, 2010 | 8:05 AM EDT
Kudos to William Douglas of McClatchy newspapers. That reporter can write and file stories with amazing speed. One such story was this article that Douglas filed about the March 20 Tea Party protest in Washington, D.C. where racial slurs were supposedly hurled. Jack Cashill of American Thinker was so impressed with the speed in which Douglas wrote his story that he wrote this American Thinker blog about this feat accompanied by a video. Here is Cashill as he observes with awe how quickly Douglas wrote his McClatchy story:

...I checked with my source on the scene, Greg Farrell, to get a timeline on the passage of the Black Caucus members from the Cannon Building to the Capitol and back.  According to Farrell, they left the Cannon Building about 2:30 PM on March 20th and returned about 3:15 PM.  He had no reason to exaggerate.

I asked because at 4:51 that same day, McClatchy reporter William Douglas posted an article on the McClatchy website with the inflammatory headline, "Tea party protesters scream 'nigger' at black congressman."

In other words, Douglas, with an attributed assist from James Rosen, managed to interview representatives John Lewis, Emanuel Cleaver, and Barney Frank, compose an 800-word article, and have it edited and formatted for posting within a 90-minute window.